Kurtz was The Daily Beast and Newsweek’s Washington bureau chief and wrote for the Beast's Spin Cycle blog. Kurtz is a longtime media reporter who served as a columnist for The Washington Post until leaving in 2010.

"People here have been groaning about Howie for years," a source at CNN told Politico. "He’s like the Dick Morris of media critics — just shoddy and out of the game."

Dick Morris, the former Fox News political commentator and advisor to President Bill Clinton, inaccurately predicted a big win for former Gov. Mitt Romney over President Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election.